Last year, in my essay The Last Days of Disco: Why the American Political System is Dysfunctional, I explained that modern American political parties were turning into databases connected to fundraising operations. The two major political parties, and in particular, the Republican Party have been growing weaker because party organizations can be supplanted by wealthy contributors who either have access to party databases or have developed databases of their own….
This prediction appears to be coming true, as evidenced by the struggle between the Koch brothers and the Republican National Committee over access to data.